{"id":2257,"date":"2021-04-26T21:37:24","date_gmt":"2021-04-26T21:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2257"},"modified":"2021-04-26T23:58:41","modified_gmt":"2021-04-26T23:58:41","slug":"monday-26th-april-2021-day-406","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/04\/26\/monday-26th-april-2021-day-406\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday, 26th April, 2021 [Day 406]"},"content":{"rendered":"

We were very pleased that this day had dawned because it was the day,if the weather was helpful, when we were scheduled to entertain our friends in the back garden. \u00a0In the morning, I busied myself giving the garden chairs and garden table a\u00a0<\/span>wash down (with a specially soft car brush so nothing gets damaged) After a rinse, they were left to dry in the sun and\u00a0I organised the cushions that we utilise on\u00a0occasions such as these. Then we picked up our newspapers and made an excursion into\u00a0our local\u00a0Waitrose<\/em> to buy some comestibles.\u00a0Waitrose had a very good selection of sandwiches, cakes, cordials, wines and ‘party things’ so we bought what we\u00a0need, loaded them to the car and set off for home, giving the park a miss for the day. Once we got home we treated ourselves to a coffee at home and enjoyed some of the goodies we had just\u00a0bought for the afternoon ‘get-together’. Then we had a light lunch, quickly put some\u00a0pieces on plates and there we were.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

After our friends arrived, we had great pleasure in opening a bottle of champagne and I have to say we had been\u00a0looking to\u00a0this moment for a long time. We had intended to have a similar little party, indoors, just around Christmastime but of course the lockdown\u00a0<\/span>intervened. On that occasion, we sat around in chairs.\u00a0socially distancing in our friend’s garage with the door open and imbibed our own damson gin.That only added to the surreal nature of the\u00a0experiences at the time so we were delighted today to have a more\u00a0normal ‘get together’ in our own back garden. The weather was\u00a0reasonably sunny and there was a bit of a\u00a0cooling breeze but we chatted our way through it. As it turned out, it proved to be an excellent opportunity to appraise our friends of our longer plans in the housing sphere. We had\u00a0always intended that in the fullness of time we would downsize somewhat and the households of Meg and myself and my son and daughter-in-law would disaggregate. We had\u00a0always\u00a0intended that our final resting place would be within walking distance of all essential goods and services including shops and transport links thus making a car unnecessary. However, we are determined to stay in the area and keep up the regular friendships that we have made in the last few years here in Bromsgrove so we are\u00a0seeing our eyes and ears open for\u00a0anything suitable that comes up within the next year or so. So it was a useful opporunity to let our\u00a0lowest friends know what we were thinking and why so that nothing would be a surprise to them. After we had eaten and drunk our fill, we had great pleasure showing people round the gardens both front and back. There is a certain amount of explaining to do as we have bought the green space in front of the house which houses our (discreetly hidden) BioDisk<\/em> from the builder\/developer several years ago and this has helped us to make sure that an access road is not driven past our houses to service the new development which has been built in the last few years immediately next to your plot. Both of our friends are very keen g<\/span>ardeners (even arranging flowers for the church) so they very much\u00a0appreciated the wild,\u00a0woodland feel which characterises our garden. There is a certain amount of cutting back yet to be done but it is always very interesting to have your house and garden viewed though the eyes of another as it\u00a0were. When we looked at our watches it was practically 6.00 and as we started proceedings at 3.00pm the last three hours had absolutely flown by. I have a feeling that if the summer is fine, we may be repeating this very pleasant experience quite a lot.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Today has not been the kind of day when we have watched any TV news. But the evidence of the top senior civil servant, Simon Case, appears to have been\u00a0underwhelming and uninformative.\u00a0<\/span>Amid MPs’ exasperation with the top Whitehall official, former Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell accused Mr Case of delivering a “badly-scripted version” of 1980s TV sitcom ‘<\/span>Yes Minister<\/em>‘. One can understand, I suppose, why senior civil servants do not want it to appear that they ‘betraying’ their political masters. However, it has to be said that there appears to be so much skulduggery, chicanery and pure sleaze\u00a0surrounding Downing Street at the moment that civil servants run the danger of being drawn into the same sleaze-ridden culture. After all, as master wordsmiths, there is always a way of\u00a0distancing yourself. One is\u00a0reminded of Francis Ewan Urquhart,a fictional character created by Michael Dobbs,\u00a0<\/span>whose catchphrase\u00a0became ‘I couldn’t possibly comment<\/em>‘ said in a certain way and with a certain look that\u00a0certainly conveyed what the character\u00a0thought about events swirling\u00a0around him.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We were very pleased that this day had dawned because it was the day,if the weather was helpful, when we were scheduled to entertain our friends in the back garden. \u00a0In the morning, I busied myself giving the garden chairs and garden table a\u00a0wash down (with a specially soft car brush so nothing gets damaged) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2257"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2262,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2257\/revisions\/2262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}